“Clause 65 of the draft Electoral Code contains quite absurd and strange restrictions with regard to journalists and observers, and it seems difficult to give any explanation for it. These provisions must be removed, either media society has to bring forward some proposals, and strive for establishing provisions that would create significantly more favourable conditions for journalists than under current legislation,” Ashot Melikian said.

He mentioned that strange and hardly feasible functions are given to chairpersons of electoral commissions through committed changes, that is to control both the voting process as such and activity of journalists and observers.

“In fact, a chairman of electoral commission has to count permanently how many journalists or observers are in the polling place at a given moment, and then decide at his own choosing whom it seems proper to remove out from the polling station in order to let journalists go inside. It is simply unacceptable,” Melikian summarized.

Armine Ohanyan, for her part, noted: “Perhaps our fears are exaggerated, perhaps there practically will not occur an incident when the presence of 8 persons would not be enough, or mass media would face obstacles concerning being at given polling place. However, the question is that our public has a strong distrust towards electoral processes. So, if the authorities wanted to increase this trust, they should have avoided any restriction at all. Not to increase the quantity of restrictions and implement such absurd things, but quite the contrary: to extend the possibilities, starting from the accreditation procedure, in order that every observer and journalist could enter the polling place freely and watch the process.”

On April 8, ‘Armenian Eagles’ (‘Hayots Artsivner’) chess team was declared the winner of the 1st Virtual Chess PRO Chess League Final Team Championship in the United States. The tournament was first held in 2017 and gathers representatives from all over the world.

Most e-poll respondents believe there are attempts to build a totalitarian state in Armenia.
To reveal the moods among users of Facebook, the most influential social platform in Armenia, the Public Journalism Club carried out an e-poll through Polls for pages tool. The e-poll sought to find out the attitude of the Armenian Facebook users to the changes in the governance system initiated by the authorities to introduce the parliamentary system.